


Hotel Honkifornia

by Palominocorn



Category: Hotel California - The Eagles (Song), Untitled Goose Game (Video Game)
Genre: Car Accidents, Food, Poor Life Choices, Recreational Drug Use, Slapstick, Swearing, be a bird do crime
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23204377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palominocorn/pseuds/Palominocorn
Summary: What would happen if the Entitled Goose made its way into the Hotel California, of Eagles fame?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. On a Dark Desert Honkway

The entitled goose had no idea how it got there, but it sure was angry about it. Walking over sand was hot and uncomfortable on its feet, while the cold wind ruffled its feathers, especially the clipped ones on its wings. The goose hadn’t eaten in well over a day, and the strange reptiles skittering around the nighttime desert started to look very appetizing  to the mostly herbivorous goose.

And worst of all, there were no bells, no flowers, not even a lousy little shoelace to untie. How was it supposed to entertain itself  _now_ ?

There was a sound in the distance, a… honk, almost? The goose honked back and started waddling toward it. 

The cold, dry air left the goose cold and its skin chapped. Its feet sunk into the sand with every step, making every centimeter of movement difficult. Somewhere above, the goose saw a shadow, some sort of predatory bird. The goose waddled faster.

Eventually the goose saw a road, and a while later heard human voices. Laughing.

No one was allowed to laugh in the presence of the goose. The goose bent down and started to sneak, only to realize that there was nothing to sneak around – the car, some skinny cacti, and loudly laughing people passing around some sort of tube, putting it to their mouths.

The goose went around, got under the car, and snuck over. Once it was next to the people, it strategically pulled some shoelaces; the people didn’t even notice. Then the goose inhaled deeply… and honked.

“ What the fuck, man?” one of the people yelled.

The people started to run around, looking for the source of the sound, many of them tripping over their untied shoelaces,  swearing and yelling, to the goose’s delight . 

While they ran around trying to figure out what was going on, the goose took its chance: it grabbed the dropped tube and jumped into the picnic basket.  Clumsily, it managed to close the cover over itself, and then it waited.

“ Hey man, where’s the joint?” one of the people asked.

“No idea. I think Bobby had it.”

“Wasn’t me,  I gave it to Jack.”

“ I think I dropped it when that sound came out. Was that a goose?”

“Can’t be. No geese in the desert.”

“ Duck, then?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous. Ducks hate the desert even more than geese do.”

“Swan?”

“Too big. We would have noticed.”

“Man, let’s just get out of here. We ate all our food and that was the last joint.”

“Yeah, Jack, you get the basket, I’ll grab the rest of the car parts.”

“Told ya a road trip through the desert was a bad idea.”

“Shut up.”

There was the sound of walking, car doors opening and closing.

“Aw, damn, this basket’s heavy. You sure there’s no food left?” Someone asked as the basket, along with the hiding goose inside, was lifted.

“ Yeah man. You’re just a fucking weakling.”

“Shut up, Bobby.”

“ Smells like weed too. You think we dropped the joint in there?”

“No man, you probably just swallowed the damn thing.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Moments later, the basket was set down somewhere, and the goose heard a slamming, the trunk of a car closing over it.  After that, it was only a few more minutes before the engine roared – or rather, sputtered – to live and they drove off.

The goose bumped the top of the basket several times, then the side, managing to get it open and on its side. The goose tumbled out, along with the stolen, smelly tube, and tried to look around: darkness,  except for a glowing bar with a picture on it. The entitled goose snapped at it with its beak, to no avail. Up front, the people laughed and talked and argued.

Eventually, the bored goose waddled up to the front of the trunk, as close to the people as it could get… and honked.

“What the fuck, man?”

“I told you the basket had something in it!”

“Damn thing is probably haunted!”

“This is all your fault, Sam!”

“ My fault?”

The car started to veer out of control, eventually going off the road and crashing into something.

“Look what you made me do, asshole!”

“Me? I’m not the one who brought a haunted picnic basket out into the desert?”

“I told you, I told you all, there was shit in there!”

“ Well we gotta get out now.” 

“At least there’s like a building up there.”

“ Hotel California. You ever heard of it?”

“Nah, man. Can’t imagine they get a lot of business, out here in the middle of the fucking desert.”

“Looks very rich. Probably a lot more than we thing.”

“Whatever, it’s exactly what we need right now. Maybe they have something to fix this damn car. Or at least call someone to tow the damn thing.”

“Told you there was something in that picnic basket.”

“Shut up, man.”

“ He’s right, we should see what’s in there.”

Something clicked, and the trunk popped open. The goose greeted four confused faced with a loud “HONK!”

“Damn, man! Told you there was a fucking swan in there!”

“ The hell? You didn’t notice an entire fucking swan in the basket?”

“ You said it was fine!”

While the people argued, the goose hopped out of the car and started waddling, first to the road and then, following the road, to the building.  On the cloudy, moonless night, the flashing neon lights from the building were the only thing lighting the darkness. 

A large predatory bird screeched from up top. The goose waddled faster, knowing that its white feathers made it an easy target against the black road.  Lizards and snakes kept making their way through the desert;  the goose heard their quiet movement through the sands.

The goose got to the building, and found, to its disappointment, that the door and windows were all closed.  There were sounds coming from inside, though, and so the goose stood juuuust outside the door… and honked.

“ Who’s there?” This voice was higher pitched and less slurred than the people in the car. The door swung open, and the goose dashed in.

The person grabbed a broom from a closet and started to chase the goose, but it hid itself in a huge ballroom under one of the many tables and she couldn’t find it.

When the person finally gave up and left, the goose poked its head out from under the long white tablecloth and looked around. 

At that moment, the goose heard loud clanging, many bells ringing at once .

Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.


	2. Voices Down the Honkidor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The goose learns more about the mysterious Hotel California, none of it good.

The goose waited under the table for everyone to leave. The bells chimed: nine chimes, then five, then fourteen. Fourteen chimes? The goose had never heard bells ringing fourteen times in a row. But shortly after the strange chimes, the building got quiet, dead. The goose waddled out from its hiding place, shook off the dust of the ages, and then started to make its way around the building.  
  
The first priority, of course, was food. With all the humans, presumably, asleep, the biggest barrier would be finding some. The goose wasn’t picky, truly. Back in the little village, where it had escaped from the farmer that clipped its wings, the goose preferred to eat either whatever was most inconvenient for the villagers, when it had the energy, or whatever was easiest to find, when it didn’t. But this building was not a village full of picnic baskets and easily distracted vegetable sellers, and all the goose found was dusty carpets and large, dark brown doors carved with grotesque faces that the bird could have sworn followed it with their eyes as it passed.  
  
At the end of one hallway, the goose saw a tapestry, a strange monster: part cat, part giant lizard, part eagle. In a fit of hungry pique, the goose grabbed the corner of the hideous, embroidered thing and yanked. The entire thing came crashing down; had the goose been paying more attention, it would have realized that it didn’t make even the barest hint of a sound as it did. Behind the tapestry was an archway, leading to a set of stairs – and the smell of food.  
  
The goose bounced down one step, then another, then a third. Here the floor was stone, ice cold, and oddly clean and smooth – so much so, in fact, that the goose slipped several steps from the bottom and fell all the way down. After the brief dizziness passed, the goose got up and looked around. Perfect: a kitchen. Counters, boxes, an old, worn fridge. Something here had to be edible, the goose knew.  
  
First it tried to climb onto a counter top, but for all of its efforts to jump and leverage itself up using its beak, all the goose got was a number of small bonks to the head. Then it tried to open the fridge, but the door turned out far too heavy and sealed much too tight. After that, the goose went through the low-level cabinets, but only cans and tightly sealed plastic containers greeted it there. And the boxes, well, the boxes wouldn’t open or budge at all. In a fit of desperation, the goose zeroed in on something in a corner: a metal, lidded cylinder. At full speed, the goose slammed its body into the thing, knocking it over. The lid sprang open, and things fell out: bits of fat cut from meat, several rotten vegetables, shells picked off of snails and shrimp, and some odd-smelling cherries.  
  
It was perhaps the saddest, most disappointing meal the goose had ever eaten, certainly the worst it ever scavenged off humans, but it was a meal nonetheless. The goose picked through every little piece of garbage it had found in the cylinder, then waddled back to the stairs, ready to take on the world.  
  
The world, too, was ready to take on the goose: it had started spinning, strangely enough, and in fact was much blurrier than it was even a few minutes ago. The goose crouched down, flapped its wings, and tried to jump up onto the first step… only to miss and land on its back on the floor.  
  
“Honk!” the goose expressed its disapproval of this unfortunate, and very unfair, turn of events. It paddled its legs in the air, stretched its wings, and put itself right side up again. Then it got back to the business of going up the stairs.  
  
It took many, many more attempts than the goose wanted to think about, but eventually, it made its way back up to the top of the stairs. The tapestry had made its way back up into its rod and once again hid the kitchen from the hallway – odd, as the goose hadn’t heard anyone walk during its time in the kitchen – and so the goose grabbed it and yanked it off again, this time throwing it down the stairs for good measure. It floated down and landed in the middle of the stairs, with the strange monster’s leering face in the middle of it, staring up at the goose with dead eyes.  
  
The goose waddled through the building again, looking for something to do now. The bells rang again: one chime, seven, four, twenty-nine, while the goose wandered the dusty halls with their strange decorations. Had twenty-nine hours passed since the goose had made its way into the building? Strange, it couldn’t have been more than forty minutes, sixty at the most.  
  
Human voices eventually broke its silent, confused wandering. The goose crouched and sneaked through the hall, to a central hub that led to many hallways, where a woman with flaming red hair, black eyes, and skin as pale as snow sat at a desk.  
  
“You’re in room 194,” she told a tall, skinny man who looked exhausted and smelled like the road as she wrote something down in a large notebook bound in blood-colored leather. “Follow me.” She lit a candle and started to walk toward the goose, her heels clicking against the floor as if it were stone and not carpet. It made itself as small as possible and scurried behind a corner.  
  
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, picking up a suitcase and following her into the hallway. “When is check-out time?”  
  
“Anytime you’d like, sir,” she replied just as she rounded the corner. “But you can never leave,” she muttered, very quietly. The exhausted man didn’t seem to hear her.  
  
The goose barely dared to peek up as they walked down the hall – was that a tail, just barely peeking out from under the woman’s blouse? No, no, it couldn’t be, there must have been something in that trash, the world was spinning and the goose must have been seeing things. And yet…  
  
The goose walked back to the woman’s desk, which was lit, just barely, by several short red candles on the walls. Strange, the electricity must have been out – but no, the goose saw no lamps, no light bulbs, nothing of the sort anywhere. Only strange figures dancing in the flames.  
  
“Welcome, welcome, welcome…” one of them whispered.  
  
“Any time, any time, any time…” another replied just after the first one stopped.  
  
“Such lovely, such lovely, such lovely…” The voices sounded desperate, hoarse, as if they’d been screaming for help for hours. The goose walked up right to the wall and took a look at the candle: no, the voices must have been coming not from the flames but from somewhere beyond the walls themselves.  
  
“Plenty, plenty, plenty…” a voice whispered.  
  
The goose heard the woman’s heels clicking against the floor again and hid in the only place it could see: in the alcove of the desk. It squished itself as far back as possible in the dim area as the bells rang again: thirteen chimes.


	3. The Mercedes Honks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The goose finds a challenger... and a ribbon.

No more visitors came to the hotel, and thus the woman at the desk who may or may not have had a tail did not leave it for hours. At least, the goose thought that hours passed – the bells tolled eight times, then five, then twenty-two, then once. The woman, who the goose thought may not have been entirely human, did some paperwork, fixed her makeup using a personal mirror that seemed to emit its own light (the goose barely suppressed the urge to honk and startle her into dropping it, then snatch it up and run away from this accursed place), and sang a strange little tune that almost, but not quite, harmonized with the voices from the walls.  
  
Eventually it got just a little bit lighter, and the woman walked away. The goose straightened itself out, ruffled all of its feathers back in place, and carefully came out from its hiding place. The light was coming from a skylight that just barely let in the greenish-reddish dawn. Did the building have that when the goose came in? It didn’t remember. The night had been so dark.  
  
The goose followed the woman down the hall, keeping its head down and its wings tucked tightly into its sides, as if that would make a difference in the wide open hallways the two of them walked through. But the woman seemed remarkably unconcerned about anything except getting to her destination.  
  
She made three turns through the hallways; the goose thought they must be approaching the front area they had just left, but instead, she approached one of the doors with the grotesque, awful faces – which fortunately were watching the woman and not the goose this time – and… pulled it aside like a tapestry. Beyond it, the goose saw a large courtyard, much larger than had any right being in the middle of this awful, horrible building with its voices and its ugly face decorations and the selfish people who refused to leave even a scrap of bread somewhere a hungry goose could easily find it. The goose dashed through the doorway right before the tapestry closed shut.  
  
There was snow on the ground, and more falling in a slow flurry from clouds that looked too close to be true clouds – and yet it was the hottest day the goose had ever known in its life. Sweaty ballet dancers made their way across the courtyard, smelling of peaches and plums – or was that smell coming from the trees around them, that were simultaneously flowering and losing their leaves? And the whole courtyard had a pale rose light to it.  
  
The woman walked through the courtyard, examining her dancers. The goose found something much more interesting to look at: at the center of each of the four walls surrounding the courtyard was an alcove with a statue, each with a dark coral ribbon around its neck. Some sort of long-legged cat, a deer with more neck than it really needed, a tall monkey, and a… goose. A goose with too much beak and two long feathers stinking out of the back of its head, but a goose nonetheless. It stood almost exactly opposite the tapesetry-door the entitled goose had come out of. With its head down almost to the warm snow, the real goose tip-flippered across the courtyard.  
  
After years of experience with a different ribbon in a different place, the goose easily pulled the satin beauty and set it down. Getting the false goose off the pedestal turned out to be trickier; the goose pushed and pulled and eventually just snapped the long skinny legs on the thing and dragged it away, hiding it behind the nearest large object: a shiny amaranth car with two doors and a decoration in the form of a circle divided into three pieces on the hood. What was the car even doing in this closed courtyard, far from anything that could be mistaken for a road, the goose wondered? Unless one of these walls was another tapestry that opened out into the outside?  
  
The impostor goose safely hidden away, the real goose returned to the alcove and stood there, motionless, in the same majestic pose: one wing stretched up and peak slightly parted. This, as the goose quickly learned, was much harder than sitting in place on the duck’s pedestal: its wing got quickly tired, and its mouth started to dry out from the merciless heat.  
  
“Oh, the damn thing fell off,” the woman said when she finally turned to look. “Damn hotel. Previous owner said it was in good shape, but the place is falling apart and there’s never the right number of rooms.  
  
She tied the ribbon onto the goose’s neck with fast, aggressive movements, squeezing it hard enough that the goose couldn’t breathe until she’d walked away and it could loosen it a little by twisting its neck this way and that.  
  
Then the goose decided to take a better look at the car. It had four headlights and a metal net on the front that took up about half the space, and the black top was down. Strangely, none of the snow was falling onto the leather seats.  
  
The goose, having never been in the driver’s seat a car before, made a running jump and managed to sail into the thing. On the landing, it hit the big circle in front of the seat, and it… honked.  
  
The goose honked back, but then the car was silent.  
  
None of the dancers had noticed, and the woman, whoever she was, had left.  
  
The goose honked again. Then it slammed its head directly into the circle again, and the car honked.  
  
This, the goose decided, could not stand. With its usual single-minded devotion, it started to tear at the car, yanking off every piece of the thing that it could get to. The leather seats, the buttons on the front panel, the siding, and, yes, the honking circle, none were spared its avian wrath. Finally, satisfied, the goose jumped out and started to waddle away – only to decide, after several steps, to tear off the emblem standing on the front of the car for good measure.  
  
“I heard something. What the hell happened?” the woman yelled from another of the tapestries that passed for doors here. Her cheeks were flushed bright red, but her breathing was regular and slow, too slow. “What is that damned bird doing in the building? Get back here!”  
  
She ran at the goose. The goose ran away. In this way, they circled the courtyard several times, the goose making figures around the trees and dancers. Oh, the goose had never regretted its inability to fly this much ever before! Eventually, almost out of breath, the goose made a desperate calculation and ran through the wall where it thought one of the tapestries had been, then dashed across the carpeted hallway and into a room.  
  
A short, slightly drunk man sat on the bed there, flipping through a magazine that looked like it had seen better days. The goose hid in the coat closet and waited, listening as the woman walked up and down the hallway, yelling something.  
  
The bells rang six times.


End file.
